O how times have changed....

[JR]

I don't doubt people had home computers before IBM's PC. For this discussion I am not counting TRS80s, Ataris or Commodore. What IBM did do was make it possible for people who didn't want to or couldn't solder 2000 connections to have a computer at home. And IBM created a standard.

Geez, it's been years since I felt the need to trash IBM PCs!

Certainly IBM legitimized the personal computer. Apple had already made their stamp with the AppleII, though. With deference to TRS-80 or Commodore owners, only the two designs from IBM and Apple were legitimate, albeit both of them still were showing their roots in the hobby industry - I mean DOS and CP/M for crying out loud! What BS was that!?

Although trained on a number of mainframe and PC technologies I started my professional career on Z80s. Anyone remember CADO computers of Torrance, CA? It was a cool multitasking box with 8" floppies and an optional 10MB removable cartridge HD, opertin CP/M. Perkin Elmer dumb terminals were my first exposure to that architecture, similar to what DEC, Prime, and HP eventually made popular.

The first PC I bought for personal use, in 1985, was a Mac 512Ke, with external 512KB floppy and dot-matrix printer. IMHO, the Mac was the first PC designed expressly to enable productivity for end users, as opposed to enabling some clever person to make an end user productive, as the IBM PC did. We proudly called it "appliance technology".

Sadly, those days as a renegade anti-establishment beige box user are history. I had to start using PCs at work in about 1995 and bought my first home PC in about 1999. I've been fully assimilated.

JR

[havighurst]

Anyone remember the Timex Sinclair 1000?

My first computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It was about the size of a calculator (that includes the keyboard). It had 2k of memory. I was living large because I had the 16k plug in memory pack and the 4" thermal printer. Looking back, it seemed like a toy, but it was my favorite computer I ever owned and brings back fond memories.